The five or so regulars readers of this blog may have noticed a pattern of promises made and not kept of things I will, may, or should discuss at some future, unspecified point. These were usually somewhere in the margin notes, but sometimes I would end with a cliffhanger. The topics included mental models, notable microblogs, and ABIM’s financial shenenigans; in my head, the list was significantly longer, and the items expanded into 1,000+ word posts that would be a slog to reference, a nightmare to edit, and which no one would ultimately read.
Up until last year, whatever I thought about those topics would stay in my head, waiting for the stars to align and for the Gods of chaos and time
Also known as my children. to smile upon their humble servant. Which is a net good for the reading public — who needs to read the unbaked thoughts of an oncologist? — but as Cory Doctorow wrote, having one’s thoughts written down is good practice both for developing them and for future reference. I was, in a way, depriving my future self of the benefit of knowing how big of a fool my past self was.
But ever since learning of the micro.blog/MarsEditcombinationThis is Miraz Jordan’s brief YouTube introduction to the two; 15 minutes of time well spent if you have even a tiny bit of interest., I’ve maintained a daily log of thoughts, readings, viewings, and writings. The low friction of the tools begs for scattered non-sequiturs and word salads — think of an unkempt Obsidian database — but the semi-social veneer that micro.blog provides tempers my worst instincts and makes the posts better overall for everyone exposed, including my future self. Sure, those longer texts still don’t get written — although, just watch this one grow! — but for personal use the snippets are even more valuable (and easier to skim).
Not everyone should be a capital-b Blogger — or have a gated newsletter for that matter — but many more people could benefit from a small-p personal blog of the commonplace type. The reason I bristle at overproduced “content” and at statements that anyone who writes must give it their all, strive to perfect everything they write above the 80%-done good-enough-for-government-work standard that is close to my heart, is that they create the wrong impression of what blogging could/should/would be if it hadn’t been for the Huffington Posts and the Gawkers of the peak-blog internet that equated blogging with monetization. And also why I took an initial dislike of The Curator’s Code despite its obvious usefulness. Why should personal blogging be standardized? It’s Personal!
Being stuck at an airport doesn’t have to be bad. Nashville, for example, has more than one airport restaurant with live music at all hours of the day (and night). Last year we spent a few hours waiting for a delayed flight at Ole Red.
As a prolific child fabulist, I very much appreciated @ayjay’s reminiscence. Most people are, in fact, reflexive embellishers, but not everyone can recognize it in themselves or turn it into a healthy skepticism. At least that’s what I tell myself!
I am reasonably quick at making decisions, and people occasionally ask me for input when they need to make theirs. This is either when they have already decided — and there are good and not so good ways of soliciting feedback then, but that is for a different time — or when they haven’t a clue about what to do. This latter situation is usually because:
The problem is not clear (“I am unhappy at my job, please help.")
The problem is clear but the options are not (yet) well-defined (“I am medical student who wants to be involved in clinical trials, please help.")
Both the problem and the options are clear, but the correct choice is not (“I have 4 good job offers with different salaries, geographic locations, and prospects for advancement, please help.")
My favorite part of the process, and the part I consider the most difficult, is defining the problem, figuring out the options, and mapping out — to the extent possible — the Markov chain for each; i.e. the first two items on the list. But once you do that, shouldn’t the choice be clear? Well, for some (many?) apparently not!
Wild problems aside,
This is admittedly a very big aside, but most issues people ask me about are not, in fact, wild, just ill-defined. once you know the choices and their consequences, shouldn’t it be easy to pick the one that fits best with your priorities?
Well, not unless you rank them! Which is so banal I’m a bit embarrassed to waste even two minutes of your time for it, but seriously, for every 10 people I ask about their top priority (singular), nine will start giving me an unordered list of them, and start hemming and hawing about my follow-up, which is to pick just one. Because there can be only one: it’s right there in the name! And if only one choice fits, well, there you have it! If there are several, you go down your ordered list one by one and prune.
Of course, it is not always that easy. But the decisions people get paralyzed about are seldom in the Sophie’s Choice category; and for those that are, there are usually many more degrees of freedom to reframe the problem, the choices, or both, than poor Sophie had. For everything else, the choice is difficult because people haven’t figured out the priority, i.e. what they actually want.
NB: the list of priorities can be all-encompassing (“values”, but remember, at the end of the day it’s really just one “value”) or context-specific (“first, do no (net) harm” for doctors, etc.) I am sure there are whole industries ready to sell you their lists of priorities, or, um, empower you to make your own. I am by nature skeptical of anyone who too readily shares theirs. Caveat lector, as they say.
September 14, 2023
The Statue of Liberty is made of copper, which long ago oxidized into a green patina: the perfect protection against the harsh salty airs of the Hudson/Upper New York Bay. So of course there is a campaign to remove that protection and make it shiny again.
From the National Aquarium in Baltimore, a non-fluorescent jellyfish. Its glow comes from background lighting conspiring with iPhone 15’s propensity to illuminate.
The Pacific sea nettle (Chrysaora fuscescens), if Google's image search is to be believed
September 12, 2023
Phrase of the day: digital dandruff. Thank you, Charlie Warzel.
